


nettled, or, the goose princess gives the hunter a sound dressing-down

by helleborehound



Category: De vilde Svaner | The Wild Swans - Hans Christian Andersen, Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms
Genre: Fairy Tale Retellings, Gen, POV Female Character, Satire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-14
Updated: 2014-10-14
Packaged: 2018-02-21 03:56:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2453816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helleborehound/pseuds/helleborehound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time, there was a bard who liked to sew new tales from the cloth of old.</p>
            </blockquote>





	nettled, or, the goose princess gives the hunter a sound dressing-down

Put down your bow.

I’ve watched you shoot, and I can tell you now that it would be a waste of a perfectly good arrow. You needn’t gawk; it’s undignified. Didn’t your mother ever tell you that you’ll catch flies with your mouth hanging open like that?

One would think you’d never encountered a talking bird before. It’s clear that you lack the sense to thank one who would save you from the slavering jaws of a wolf. You ignore your grandmother’s stories at your peril; did you discard them as childish things when you set out into the woods, weapon in hand? Tread carefully, lest you find yourself cursed to sleep for a hundred years, or doomed to chase a golden songbird that cannot be caught.

Since you appear to have forgotten all the wisdom that your elders might have imparted, let me remind you of the rules by which this world is governed. I am not of the fair folk, though there are fae in these woods. I cannot grant wishes, but you would do well to speak kindly to any wizened crones you might meet. I am under an enchantment – but it is not yours to break.

I myself have no quest for you, but if you are good, and listen well, I’ll point you back to the path. Despite all your posturing, it’s quite clear that you’ve lost your way.

Once upon a time, there was a bard who liked to sew new tales from the cloth of old. He would lay them out upon his workbench – fine linen, worn cotton, crushed silk the color of moth’s wings – and cut them apart, taking the pieces that took his fancy, and discarding the rest. He would stitch up his reworked stories with thread of gold, and set them with diamonds that sparkled like dew, and listeners would travel from far and wide to marvel at how costly and precious they were.

One such story concerns a princess and her brothers, their transformation into swans by a wicked stepmother, and their subsequent rescue by their sister. The strong female heroine is a welcome change from princesses who behave as though crowns render their wearers incompetent, but the whole affair has a tiresome thread of moral preaching woven throughout. While it is neatly and tidily presented, it lacks color. If I squint, I can see the original weave of the fabric, its pulled warp and crooked weft; but there is precious little of my own story in the finished creation.

My story begins, as these stories often do, with a king. Said king had unfortunate taste in wives, as kings in these stories are wont to do. I do not mean that the queens laughed too loudly, or drank more wine than was considered seemly, or danced as though they weren’t afraid to enjoy themselves. They were not even guilty of curiosity or independent thinking. No, the king’s taste was unfortunate, because his wives had a regrettable habit of dying either in childbirth, or shortly thereafter.

The first made a good effort: two sons, hale and hearty, each within a year of the other, before she faltered and withered away. The second, a delicate slip of a girl, struggled through several miscarriages and stillbirths before she bore him a son, and thus spent, shuffled off the mortal coil. The third was a rich widow, with two young sons of her own – childbirth didn’t do her in, but she was no match for scarlet fever. And the fourth bore him twins and quietly expired. If you have done your arithmetic, you’ll see that that comes to seven royal progeny in all.

The younger twin – the seventh child – was the fairest, of course. Hair the rich gold of ripe summer wheat, eyes bluer than cornflowers. A mouth as red and as delicate as a budding poppy. At a distance, he was easily mistaken for the loveliest maiden in the land.

Yes, “he.” It was a great embarrassment to the court. While these stories follow certain laws – the youngest is always the brightest, the fairest, and the savior of the kingdom – on this occasion, in this place and time, the youngest child was a prince. Worse, he was a prince who refused to comport himself in the manner expected of young men of royal birth.

As a child, my twin latched onto the royal tailor, fascinated by the gleam of pins and scissors, the snippets of taffeta and scraps of fur scattered across the floor of the workshop. When the wet-nurse tried to remove him, he screamed and cried and made such a fuss that the apprentices took him in hand. They taught him to sew with the tiniest of stitches, and showed him the art of turning hems and setting sleeves. When he was not at work with needle and thread, he could be found with pen and ink, sketching all a manner of shirts and doublets and ballgowns.

My twin spoke very little, but he loved to sing. The men and women of the tailor’s shop taught him folk tunes and weavers’ ballads, old songs that spoke of grief and violence, love and loss. Perhaps such songs were not suitable for a young prince, but the words were all the sadder and lovelier in his sweet, clear child’s voice.

He spoke so little, there were many in the court who believed him to be mute. They did not know that he saved his words for me, that his quiet laughter and sly comments were for my ears alone. He listened unfailingly, and did not laugh when I told him my heart’s desire: I wished to fly.

I knew it was a foolish wish, this dream of wings, but I wished it all the same, with all the reckless hope and longing I could muster. I climbed the tallest trees in the gardens, heedless of my skirts, and whenever I could escape my tutors, I would climb to the highest tower and watch the birds in the sky. I learned to ride, and I developed an excellent seat upon a horse, for the closest I could come to flight was to take our wildest mounts at their most furious gallop.

Our half-brothers were kind, but distant. There span of years between us was wide, and the only common activity we shared was the hunt. Ladies of the court were rarely members of the hunt in earnest, but I had secured my place by virtue of being the swiftest rider of all. My twin had fashioned me the most marvelous riding cloak from cloth of the softest, richest scarlet, trimmed in feathers collected from all the exotic birds in the royal menagerie, and I cut a fine figure on my mount as I rode in the lead.

We were out on a hunt, my half-brothers and I, the day that the fifth queen showed her hand.

The king had married for beauty, and married for wealth, and found that neither afforded him any great happiness. Having well sorted the matter of heirs - to lose one prince is misfortune, to lose six would be carelessness of the most ridiculous order - he cast about for a woman who might provide his twilight years with some amusement, and married a woman for her wit.

The fifth queen, while charming and vivacious, was also ambitious to the point of being ruthless. In another era, I am sure she would have made a superb military tactician, but her options in this place and time were limited. As a clever, ambitious woman, the only role she could afford to assume was that of wicked stepmother – which is, of course, another way of saying that she became a witch.

Magic spells, like archery and sugarcraft, are a precision art. There are all sorts of charms and talismans that can knock them askew: branches of holly, sprigs of rosemary, golden apples, silver keys. I believe, in this case, that it was the iron shoes upon our horses that created the crack in the glass: rather than bewitching our mounts, or dropping us dead as we rode, the witch’s spell transformed us into a flock of geese.

I know the tale says “swans,” but either the bard was a city dweller, and only familiar with birds in guise of bread and fowl, or he thought swans more dignified than geese, more befitting of royalty. Keep in mind, though, that the witch meant us harm, and even thwarted, the spell reflected her intent. Swans don’t become Sunday dinner. Wild geese do.

I do not believe that the fifth queen meant my twin any harm. After all, there had to be at least one prince to serve as heir, if only in name. My brother took his chance, however, and made an escape. He packed up his scissors and needles, his pins and his bodkin and thimble, and took a ship across the sea to a foreign land where the natives were famous for their love of fine fashions. There he set up shop, and made a name for himself as a tailor.

Tailors and shoemakers draw fae the way tall trees invite lightning strikes. It is said that the fair folk admire fine handiwork, but I suspect it is all the bright and shiny bagatelles scattered in tailors’ workshops that they find truly compelling. Not for nothing is the magpie considered a fae creature.

My twin followed the rules carefully: dishes of bread and milk, pats of sweet butter upon festival days, and if he sometimes found his laces unspooled, or his gold thread in untidy tangles, he turned a blind eye. I believe he may have befriended them – or at least as well as one can ever befriend the fair folk. He must have spoken of his feathered siblings. They rewarded him for his faithfulness by telling him that there might be a way to undo the spell.

Magic, as I said, is a precision art, and while it is possible to unpick a spell already woven, much as one unpicks stitches already set in fabric, it is far trickier to unravel a spell gone wrong. He could not save us in the usual manner, with the ringing of bells and snuffing of candles, or binding in hoops of rowan and rings of coarse salt.

Instead, the task would have to be painful and repetitive. If he gathered stinging nettles and turned them into flax, and wove the thread into fabric, and made from the fabric six shirts, they should be talisman enough to break the curse. Note that the key word here is “should.” There are no promises where spells gone awry are concerned.

Silence was not a condition of his task. The fair folk are prone to mischief; they care little for instilling virtues. He did not need to demonstrate patience or piety; had he been clever enough to find any loophole, they would not have begrudged him. It might very well have earned him their admiration.

Remember that he was quiet by nature, and without my presence, his speech was even more sparse. I believe he stayed mute out of prudence: imagine how foolish he would sound, describing his task aloud. Imagine, if you will, that it might have been easier to lapse into a silence broken only by song.

_My mother she slew me,_   
_My father he ate me,_   
_My sister took a silken scarf,_   
_And gathered up the bones of me_

I forgot myself, when the spell was still new and young. I forgot that I had been a sister and a daughter, and that my twin, the brother who loved me best, had once made me a red riding cloak trimmed in feathers from all the birds of the land. For all I knew, I had always been a goose, and life had always been nothing more than flight, and food, and rest.

_My sister took a silken scarf,_   
_And gathered up the bones of me_   
_To lay under the almond tree_   
_To lay under the almond tree_

It started with a song. It was an old ballad, one my twin loved to sing as he worked, one that was sweet and lovely of tune, despite the song’s grim words. I did not know it as such; goose-thoughts are not given to music. I knew it for what it was, however: a call to be obeyed.

I led the flock, as I had always led the hunt. I followed the song through rain and sleet, until the weather turned fine and clear and we found ourselves in a foreign land. We settled at the edge of a wide lake, and I knew the man who stood there, waiting. He wore a red cloak trimmed in bright feathers – a cloak that had been made for me.

My twin had learned his lessons well, and time and trial had made him a skilled tailor. His work drew the attention of the king, a man who loved beautiful things, and beautiful young men most of all. The king became thoroughly enamored of my twin, and insisted on his appointment at court.

The king’s advisers were at their wits’ end. They would never marry him off if he’d blatantly established his lover at court, and worse, invited a merchant into his bed. No matter that my twin was too preoccupied with the cut of the king’s breeches to spare the slightest thought for their contents. No matter that the king was quick to drive away all his would-be wives all on his own. Instead, the advisers cooked up some half-baked accusation, and had my twin charged with treason.

The bard had a knack for imagery. The lovely girl on a pyre, surrounded by swans. Six princes, the last with a wing still, in place of an arm. The pyre transformed into a hedge of scarlet roses. They made for exquisite woodcuts.

Consider that my tale was not nearly so poetic.

My twin finished the shirts before they took him away – a neat stack upon the pallet in his cell – but he had no time to dress us. We were geese, and have you ever tried to put on a shirt with all your fingers stuck together? That’s how it is, to dress yourself as a goose. It was only by sheer chance that I managed to crawl into a neckhole and resume my human form. Worse, have you ever tried to button a goose into a shirt? With six angry birds in one small cell, it was no small matter to get my half-brothers dressed.

We were made human again, good and whole, but we were late to our own brother’s execution: half-naked in torn shirts, besmirched in goose shit, and bleeding where we’d pecked at each other. Hardly a subject for woodcuts.

They burn witches at the stake, but they execute traitors. It is lucky that even executioners have a first day at their work, and that this one was particularly nervous. The executioner’s sword only nicked his throat before we interrupted. It was not a mortal wound, but it was enough to render his voice the barest of whispers.

The fair folk did well to warn my twin of the dangers of spells gone awry. We learned that the enchantment could be quieted, but not broken. My half-brothers would have to wear nettle-flax shirts for the rest of their days, lest they resume their forms as geese. For all that the court was anxious to put the whole unseemly business behind us, little could disguise that they did not age quite as mortals should, hissed when upset, and that at least one retained a taste for water-bugs. Such details make for difficult royal histories, and awkward royal portraits, and so they have been carefully elided and forgotten.

The king is still my brother’s patron. He named his cousin heir to the throne, and married a princess who was more interested in breeding roses than children. They treat each other kindly, and she regards his lovers with gentle grace.

Sometimes I help my brother in his workshop – there are all sorts of small and tiresome tasks that he is happy to have my hands for. But mostly I cast aside my cloak of red – now lined in cloth of nettle – and I fly. Is a curse still a curse, if it grants your heart’s desire?

Put away your bow. You’ll find the path where ash and alder have twined together; turn home. Seek out your grandmother, and pay attention to her words. Should we meet in these woods again, I won’t be so generous. Next time, should you blunder into the path of a wolf, I’ll leave you to be eaten right up.


End file.
